As you may have noticed (or not noticed actually, since nothing has been posted on the blog recently) I have taken a hiatus from writing about Dover Canyon. I apologize for my absence.
The winery is moving into harvest, which is a very exciting time of the year for winemakers; and Dover Canyon will shortly begin sending wine club shipments, which I hope is a very exciting time of the year for our wine club members!

The winery is moving into harvest, which is a very exciting time of the year for winemakers; and Dover Canyon will shortly begin sending wine club shipments, which we hope is a very exciting time of the year for our wine club members! Dover Canyon has a new tasting room manager and assistant winemaker, Glenda Laurie. Glenda and Dan will be personally handling every aspect of the wine club, wine sales, hospitality, production, online presence and media relations from this point forward.

As many of you know, in addition to our twice annual wine club selections, we also offer an optional third shipment of 3 bottles chosen from our smallest and most select productions.
The 2009 'Rare, Reserve and Estate' shipment includes 2 bottles of our 2007 Reserve Zinfandel ($38), an exlusive blend of westside Paso vineyards, including our own head-trained, dry-farmed estate fruit. Production of this special blend was only 200 cases.
This shipment also includes 1 bottle of the 2007 Carmenere ($36) from Colbert Vineyard. Carmenere is a rare grape in the central coast, but this long-forgotten Bordeaux variety thrives in the mistral climate of San Miguel and produces layered wines with overtones of chocolate and garden herbs. Only 50 cases produced.
If you would like to receive this special offering or sign up for the annual RR&E shipments, please let us know! We'll be happy to fill your order.

Katie Zelman sent us this photo of Katie swinging barefoot in her wedding dress on the swing under our 100-year-old black walnut. Although the Zelmans did not get married here, Katie stopped by the day after the ceremony on her way to the beach, where she planned to jump in the surf in her wedding dress. The wedding photographers were in tow, so Katie climbed on the swing, kicked off her shoes, and love was literally in the air.

The night before our scheduled bottling date, the bottling service delivers the "truck"—the mini-factory that will bottle the wine. A courageous driver backs the semi and trailer down our steep vineyard road and up to the wine barn. Early the next morning, the line crew will show up before dawn to run water through the hoses and equipment, sterilize the line with hot water, and prime the fill bowl for the pump which will gently pull the wine into the bottles.

For those of you on Facebook, check out the list of Facebook's Top 50 Blogs on Wine.
Yes, Dover Canyon is Number One!! With a healthy lead on all the other wine blogs at this point in time. And I'd like to point out that these are not just winery blogs—the list includes wine reviewers, industry insiders, wine-and-food blogs, and wine travel blogs.
In the meantime, we'll be trying to keep our lead by writing regularly, posting photos of the winery and vineyard, adding more videos, and looking at life from our own uniquerky perspective.
Thank you for helping us become Number One!!

Charlie Lepore is a big fan of the Benito Dusi Vineyard Old Vine Zinfandel. Charlie, like some other Dover Canyon fans, asked for an opportunity to buy futures. "Charlie, I don't have a program set up for that," I explained. "We do take pre-orders a few months before release." Charlie, however, was not to be put off so easily ...

It sounds like the name of a band, but it's the name of my very first YouTube video. I'd like to say that it's a video about vineyard technique, or cleaning barrels, or bottling wine--but it's not. It's a stupid pet video, and it happened entirely by accident, from start to finish.
Somehow winemaker Dan got snookered into babysitting a 9 week old long-haired chihuahua. Inexplicable, but there you have it. So the poor little tyke arrives, unnanounced and unnamed, for a 2-week stay. "I always wanted a little dog," Dan said. "That's not a little dog!" I protested. "That's a ... a... microdog!" And so his temporary name became "Mikey."

We are enjoying some gentle April rains, welcome for several reasons. As many of you know, our 2008-09 rainfall is about half of what we normally receive, at just 11" as opposed to our average of 22". Another inch or two of rain will be gratefully accepted in the water banks that underlie our hills, and supply our wells. The cool, cloudy days encourage the ground moisture to leach downward into our water aquifers instead of burning it off as evaporation. And most importantly, this warm, rainy weather means no danger of late killing frosts like the ones we had last year!